Impact of Urbanization on Eco-environment in Zhejiang Province: An Empirical Analysis Based on VAR Model

Setting the “14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of New Urbanization in Zhejiang Province” as a background, this paper constructs a VAR model to discuss the influence of demographic, spatial, economic, and social urbanization on the development of the eco-environment in Zhejiang Province, based on time series data in the period of 2001–2020. The results show that with an overall contribution rate of more than 80%, the urban development in Zhejiang Province has a significant impact on the eco-environment. In terms of specific urbanization types, spatial urbanization brings the strongest impact and contributes a rate of 53.60% to deteriorating the eco-environment in the long term. Based on the above findings, this paper proposes recommendations on how to avoid the negative impacts of spatial urbanization and fully leverage the positive impacts of urbanization on the eco-environment in Zhejiang Province.